Ah, ninja'd - just read about it, and came here to find the news already posted.

I emailed the Heinlein Trust foundation back on November 25 of last year, in the hopes that they might give an award to Mr Jeff Bezos. Glad to see Mr Bezos has earned their acclaim, as likewise Mr Elon Musk already has.

Quote

Subject: Suggestion of Heinlein Prize for Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin

Dear Heinlein Prize Trust,

I would like to suggest Jeff Bezos and his company Blue Origin for your consideration to award them the Heinlein Prize.

Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin have been the first to achieve the feat of sending a rocket to space and return it back with a tail-first powered landing -- the very kind of space travel which has been a hallmark of Robert Heinlein's science fiction vision of the future.

In the interest of a multi-competitive playing field for advancement of access to space for humankind, I would urge you to see Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin as worthy candidates for recognition by your foundation.

Bezos to be presented with the Heinlein Prize on September 14th at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Article also links to Video of Elon Musk playing around with the sword that comes with the $250,000 prize.

The prize money is noted to be about 0.0003 % of Bezos current net worth as the third richest person on the planet.

Sadly paywalled for me (in the sense that I can't see it unless I turn off my ad blocker, which I'm not going to do on random sites, since ads can be a source of malware, although it's off here.)

Logged

"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

“I think NASA should work on a space-rated nuclear reactor. If you had a nuclear reactor in space-- especially if you want to go anywhere beyond Mars, you really need nuclear power. Solar power just gets progressively difficult as you get further way from the sun. And that’s a completely doable thing to have a safe, space-qualified nuclear reactor.”

I wonder if there's any private sector company out there that might partner with Bezos to develop and offer up a space-based nuclear reactor? Bezos could then use that to power his moonbase first. Can the same reactor model be rated for both Moon and Mars?

“Sometimes my friends say, 'Would you move to Mars?' Not in the near term. Think about it: no whiskey, no bacon, no swimming pools, no oceans, no hiking, no urban centers. Eventually Mars might be amazing. But that’s a long way in the future. This planet is incredible. There are waterfalls and beaches and palm tress and fantastic cities and restaurants and parties and events like this. And you’re not going to get that anywhere but Earth for a really, really long time.”

On competing against Musk and other commercial companies:

“Competition is super healthy...Great industries are never made by single companies. And space is really big. There is room for a lot of winners...At Blue Origin, our biggest opponent is gravity. The physics of this problem are challenging enough..Gravity is not watching us and saying, ‘Uh-oh those Blue Origin guys are getting really good, I’m going to have increase my gravitational constant.' Gravity doesn’t care about us at all. ”

“I think NASA should work on a space-rated nuclear reactor. If you had a nuclear reactor in space-- especially if you want to go anywhere beyond Mars, you really need nuclear power. Solar power just gets progressively difficult as you get further way from the sun. And that’s a completely doable thing to have a safe, space-qualified nuclear reactor.”

Big kudos to Bezos for saying that. That's exactly what should be happening - these are the hard problems that industry cannot tackle.

“Competition is super healthy...Great industries are never made by single companies. And space is really big. There is room for a lot of winners...At Blue Origin, our biggest opponent is gravity. The physics of this problem are challenging enough..Gravity is not watching us and saying, ‘Uh-oh those Blue Origin guys are getting really good, I’m going to have increase my gravitational constant.' Gravity doesn’t care about us at all. ”

I really like this quote. May there be many winners in space. Also, I consider gravity my personal nemesis, always dropping my things from tables and making me sweat on stairs. It's time we overcome it.

I agree - space shouldn't be about man against man - it should be about Man vs the Elements or forces of nature.

I'd imagine that a spirit of cooperation over competition will be essential for human colonization of outer space.

I suspect the opposite... or at least equal measures of both. As much as idealists want humanity to be different, we are highly motivated by competition and individual achievement. All mankind sharing equally in the benefits/resources of "Outer Space" sounds great but really isn't viable for humanity as it pragmatically (really) exists. Who sticks it out there if achievements (profits, glory, whatever) are going to be equally distributed among the planet's 5B people?

« Last Edit: 09/16/2016 11:12 AM by AncientU »

Logged

"If we shared everything [we are working on] people would think we are insane!"-- SpaceX friend of mlindner

I suspect the opposite... or at least equal measures of both. As much as idealists want humanity to be different, we are highly motivated by competition and individual achievement. All mankind sharing equally in the benefits/resources of "Outer Space" sounds great but really isn't viable for humanity as it pragmatically (really) exists. Who sticks it out there if achievements (profits, glory, whatever) are going to be equally distributed among the planet's 5B people?

Alright, but there's going to have to be a higher standard of ethics out in space - because what if you came across someone stranded out in space and had to make a choice between saving them versus saving your payload or completing your mission? Hopefully outer space won't become dog-eat-dog, because there's enough threat from the environment itself.

Man against Nature. Cooperation. Yes, some competition too, but only compete on executing with excellence, and on efficiency. No cronyism. That's my hope. We'll see. But the inspirational vid that WashPo ran is actually really good. Perfect short bit to convince the mundanes that space is a game changer. Once it goes commercial.

"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Hopefully competition will be more along technological lines and in the form of technical innovation, which all can benefit from. For instance, imagine if SpaceX and Blue Origin get into an "arms race" on building bigger and more capable rockets - it could lead to radical improvements on space launch capability and on the cost of access to space.

There was a popular videogame series called "Red Faction" which was about Martian miners rebelling against greedy corporate mining overlords from Earth. Hopefully, competition won't lead us towards that kind of unpleasant future - exactly the kind that Heinlein would have written about:

Heinlein sometimes depicted a harsher view of existence in outer space, analogous to previous human endeavors like the colonization of the Americas. Stories of his I remember reading as a child were: Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Rocketship Galileo, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Puppet Masters, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Starman Jones, The Starbeast, Between Planets, Time for the Stars, Podkayne of Mars, Space Cadet.

Hopefully, space industry innovation won't just be in launch vehicles, but all the other areas related to maintaining quality of life - particularly in robotics, which will be our essential workforce in space - and probably increasingly on Earth as well.

2. Show me the google search (with lmgtfy or whatever) that yields the image of jeff kneeling with the sword in front of a half-dozen people. I assert Google just won't give that image as the result of any query.

I suspect the opposite... or at least equal measures of both. As much as idealists want humanity to be different, we are highly motivated by competition and individual achievement. All mankind sharing equally in the benefits/resources of "Outer Space" sounds great but really isn't viable for humanity as it pragmatically (really) exists. Who sticks it out there if achievements (profits, glory, whatever) are going to be equally distributed among the planet's 5B people?

Alright, but there's going to have to be a higher standard of ethics out in space - because what if you came across someone stranded out in space and had to make a choice between saving them versus saving your payload or completing your mission? Hopefully outer space won't become dog-eat-dog, because there's enough threat from the environment itself.

The high seas are like this already... plenty competition, winners and losers, and the benefits are an 'opportunity' for all humanity (equality of opportunity and all that) but when airmen or sailors are in need at sea, it is all hands to the rescue -- regardless of nation of origin or registry. I recall one night on watch when one of our P-3 patrol planes ditched in the North Pacific (closest point of land was reported as Petropovalovsk) -- the Russian (Soviet at the time) response was immediate and unquestioning. Their merchantman rescued the half of the crew that survived the ditching and exposure to the elements.

Competition and cooperation can co-exist. I just don't believe we'll ever get there to find out if we rely on idealism alone.